by L. A. Graf
He had drifted into a slight doze, happy with his daydreams, when he heard a sound behind him. He shifted slightly, turning. "Jim?" His head exploded with sudden pain and everything went dark.
Consciousness didn't steal up on Chekov so much as crash over him, driven forward by a swell of panic so sharp it made him gasp and fight to sit upright.
"Sir?"
He couldn't truly seeonly glittering darkness, slashed by bands of twitching yellowand his muscles knotted, stiff as twisted leather, at the first hint of independent movement. He kicked at the blankets covering him, suddenly too hot to stand their weight.
"It's all right " Strong, male hands pushed him back to the uneven pallet. "Sir, it's all right! We're safe for nowwe've found someplace to stay." The voice flitted across his sick awareness just beyond what he could identify. He knew that it spoke out of loyalty, though, and loyalty he could trust. That calmed him and let him relax, even if only a little.
"Where are we?" Chekov wasn't sure at first if he'd asked that in the right language. The translators might not be trustworthy, might take too long to make his words understood. So he asked again, more carefully, and was rewarded this time with a change of lighting and a small hand on his arm.
"Chekov? I'm right here." From somewhere nearby he heard quiet, deliberate movement, then a ration canister's whispered pop-hisss. Uhura's brown face appeared on the fringe of his vision. Hopeful concern moved in her eyes, but her breath didn't steam when she breathedthe steam came from something she held out of sight in her hands.
It occurred to him that perhaps he'd only just opened his eyes.
Rockrough and glittering blackformed the sides and roof of their shelter. Yellowed furs lined the uneven walls, and flat, smokeless oil lamps skipped shadows across every surface. Uhura knelt by Chekov's shoulder, her insulation suit peeled away to leave her face and head uncovered. "I don't suppose I can get you to eat something?"
He didn't know whether or not he answered, but she coaxed him into drinking half the warm soup mixture anyway. He didn't have enough strength to fight her, so was glad that it tasted recognizable and good and not like her usual offerings. "That tastes wonderful."
Uhura laughed, her voice hoarse with strain and exhaustion. "You must be in worse shape than I thought." Then, just as quickly, her face folded into a frown of quiet worry and she added, "It's good to talk to you again. I don't know when I've been so worried."
With those few words, she woke what memories Chekov possessedtheir flight across the ice, the attack by Alion's men, the loss of Publicker into the churning water. That last memory sliced him with cold all the way to the bone. To try and drive it away, he asked, "Where's Howard?"
"Outside. He sat with you all last nightit's my turn now."
I woke up for a while, then, Chekov thought, but didn't say it. But he couldn't remember what else had happened. "Where are we?"
Uhura glanced around as though only just noticing the place herself. "A native shelter." Reaching behind her, she drew a stooped, older woman into his sight. Something about the arrangement of her blunt native features looked familiar to Chekov, although he couldn't recognize her face. "This is Ghyl," Uhura explained, "a friend I made back at the village. She came here several days ago to pray." Her smile flashed, nervous and grateful, against the darkness of her skin. "It's lucky for us she did."
Chekov struggled into a sitting position, his mind already whirling around three words from the middle of her answer: several days ago. Dizziness swelled over him and nearly knocked him flat again. "How long have I been out?" he asked, fighting back the weakness.
Both women reached out to steady him as he swung his legs over the pallet's edge and propped his forehead against one hand. "About fifty hours," Uhura admitted, shaking out a nearby wad of fur until it was recognizably a parka.
Fifty hours! Chekov waved aside the lieutenant commander's attempt to settle the parka over his shoulders, trying to make both his stomach and vision settle enough to register the actual layout of his surroundings. Predictably, Uhura ignored him; when the fur slid away from the smooth surface of his insulation suit, she simply held onto the front of it herself to keep it from falling again. Chekov looked around at the cluttered native hovel, rubbed at a bone-deep ache in his left arm and asked, "What happened?"
The frown that skated across Uhura's face warned him the answer would be unpleasant. "I think one of Alion's men accidentally poisoned you."
That figured. "Accidentally?"
The old woman spat a harsh hiss that sounded deep with displeasure and disgust. "God's kiss," Chekov's insulation suit translator supplied, echoed rapidly by, "Kraken venom." Not sure how else to interpret this contradiction, Chekov decided Ghyl's words must mean both things at once.
Ghyl fussed with the blankets around him, smoothing down the furs, straightening the wrinkles while Kitka sentences squeaked out of her almost too quickly for the translator to track. "On harpoons," the English words came slowly, "god's kiss helps the Kitka in our hunting. It causes sleep for Kitka and animals, only pleasant sleep. For humans, it seems the kiss causes much more." She fixed him with a cold, white stare, her hands moving angrily along her thighs, as though rubbing for warmth. "But no accident," she assured him. "Alion knows this kills humans. He has bragged to us of this. He takes his Feathered Men to hunt god from the waterhe doesn't wait for god to bring himself onto the ice to die. He wants the kiss, but for his own bad things. He wants to kill all humans."
Chekov lifted his head long enough to take the canister of soup from Uhura's hands. His mouth still liked tasting the soup better than his stomach liked taking it, but he forced himself to drink it anyway. He needed something nutritious inside him. His brain knew that, even if his body didn't agree at the moment After all, fifty hours down after being shot full of native poisonMcCoy wouldn't let him out of sickbay for a week once the doctor found out.
"Your people are obviously frightened of Alion and his men," Uhura said, reaching across to touch Ghyl's arm. When the old Kitka woman shook her head sternly, Uhura asked, "Why don't you do something to stop him?"
Ghyl whistled her distress. "Fear makes the people weak. He came from the south with strong young men and strange, southern weapons and ways, and began telling everyone what to do. This is not the Kitka way."
Chekov looked up sharply, having to wait through more translation even after Ghyl fell silent with surprise. "Not the Kitka way?" he asked her, putting the empty soup canister on the ground between his feet. "Then Alion isn't your leader? He isn't your shaman?"
Chekov guessed from the length of the Kitka translation that something in his words hadn't gone across easily. Ghyl's expression of anxious confusion only verified this.
"Your magic man." He shrugged off Uhura's parka in unconscious irritation, feeling like he ought to be using his hands to make things clear, but not having the faintest idea what he wanted to do with them. "The one among you who talks to your gods."
Ghyl surprised him by turning her face away and spitting violently. "Each person speaks to god in whatever way god finds most fitting. Alion wishes to make himself god for all the Kitka people, that's why he uses young men to scare the old." She pulled her lips into a severe frown, eyes flashing. "Someday, god will make Alion pay for his arrogance, and only god will be god then."
If we're lucky, Chekov thought, god will come get him before he catches up and kills us all.
"Lieutenant Commander Uhura?" Howard's voice floated into the small chamber from somewhere distant below them, effectively ending the discussion before any further speculations on Alion's spiritual future could be offered. "Commander," he called again, youth and uncertainty clear in the lilt of his words, "I think you'd better come look at this, sir."
Guided by the direction of both women's gazes, Chekov looked toward a corner to his right and behind him, and spotted the irregular oval of a carved doorway among the stone and leaping shadows. Catching Uhura's arm with one hand, he whispered simply, "Hel
p me," and pushed unsteadily to his feet.
The room only swayed a little as he lurched upright, but even that steadied when Ghyl moved in on his other side to take his elbow. He resisted leaning against her, sure he'd topple her slight frame if he so much as breathed against it.
Uhura bore his weight easily enough, though. Perhaps too easily, he thought, if the effort still left her free to tug the ever-present parka over his shoulders again. "I have the insulation suit." He nearly lost his balance trying to move away from the garment. "I don't need a parka."
Uhura countered by sliding his arm down one sleeve and gesturing Ghyl to do the same. "You're shivering." She reached up to fit a pair of goggles over his head.
Not shivering, he could have told her, trembling. He felt so weak, he could barely hold his head up, much less stand. Explaining that would probably get him shoved back into bed, though, and he didn't want to be flat on his back right now. Walking around a little would help. At least he hoped so. "All right," he sighed, pulling down her own goggles for her. "Let's go find Howard."
The oval doorway led down into a rough tunnel of stairs, marching through lustrous rock toward the moan and salty sigh of ocean. Ghyl led the way, Uhura behind her so that Chekov could steady himself with a hand on the lieutenant commander's shoulder as they navigated the humid half-dark. They broke into sunlight on the side of an ice-streaked incline, alternating black rock and blue ice delineating where steps had been cut into the surface to carry a person close to the ice-choked expanse of plankton-green water.
At the foot of those stairs Howard stood with rigid impatience, fists at his sides while he studied something in the water below his feet, then glanced upward to verify the others were coming. He jerked his head in silent surprise when he finally caught sight of the approaching trio, but by way of greeting said only, "Chief, I'm glad you're here," when they finally stepped down even with him.
"What's going on?" Chekov asked. Out here now in the wind and salt spray, Chekov was glad for the parka, despite its heavy weight. By pressing a handful of fur across his mouth, he could almost breathe comfortably enough to forget he hadn't bothered to reinstall his breath filter before coming outside. "What did you find?"
In answer, Howard only pointed and stepped away from the spar of cloudy ice to let the others see. Chekov went down on all fours to study the blurred image, but couldn't make sense of the abstract patterns of scarlet, black, and green beneath his hands. "What is it?"
Uhura leaned over his shoulder, then gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. "Blood," she said. When Chekov frowned back at her, she pointed at a cloud of bright color just below the surface. "That's blood."
"And a face, I think." Howard leaned down as well to sketch the outline of a pale oval just above Uhura's frozen blossom. "It's somebody, sir. I'm just not sure who."
Somebody. The images made sense, then, quite suddenly. A cap of dark hair, obscure smudges of black where eyes would sit, all positioned above a man-sized column of Nordstral green. Over it all, blood like dye cast into angry water, discoloring everything from neckline to crotch.
Choosing a spot above the dead man's left breast, Chekov scrubbed at the ice to heat it, trying to force it clear enough to see. Just before the wind skated over to frost his new-made viewport, he glimpsed a scrawl of black, human lettering in the shape of a name: VERNON STEHLE, M.D.
"It's the shuttle crew." He felt suddenly sick and shivering all over again. "My Godwe've found our rescuees."
Chapter Thirteen
MCCOY WASN'T UNCONSCIOUS for long. He came to, stiffly upright against a pipe, arms bound behind him. He blinked several times against the pain at the back of his head and tried to orient himself. Raising his head, he gaped at the man standing against the opposite wall, his shoulder leaning indolently against the pressure gauge for the tank. "Muhanti! You're supposed to be dead!"
The ship's medical officer was soaked to the skin, his dark hair plastered to his skull like a shiny, black cap. His shoes were missing. His entire body shook, but McCoy couldn't tell if it was from cold or something else.
Muhanti smiled in an oily fashion, and McCoy saw that he was quite insane. His eyes reminded McCoy of Baker's, from the tape Dr. Kane showed them all those years ago aboard Curiesomeone lucid trapped behind a wall of thoughts they cannot understand or breach. "That's what the Federation would like, isn't it, McCoy? It's what you were hoping. Unfortunately for you, it takes a lot more than the Federation to kill Pushkali Muhanti!" He proudly thumped himself on the chest, and his shirt stuck to his skin.
"No one wants to see you dead, Muhanti."
"Liar," the doctor replied easily, obviously amused. "The Federation learned about my hypotheses and my discussions with Captain Mandeville regarding the debilitation of our crew, and decided to get rid of us." One finger rose to lazily trace the contours of the pressure gauge and the release lever beside it. "Your psychologists must have had a field day studying her personality. It isn't too awfully difficult to come up with a way for an obsessive-compulsive to kill themselves." He chuckled, but it wasn't a happy sound. "They practically do it for you, any number of times. Always putting themselves first, playing the martyr." His fingers tightened around the dial, palm flat against the face. His knuckles whitened with strain, but Muhanti didn't seem to notice. "Your captain has some of the same traits, I've observed," he remarked conversationally, then winked broadly as though he and McCoy had just shared a delightful joke.
"What are you talking about?" McCoy struggled in his bonds. "Untie me, Muhanti, and we'll discuss it."
"We can talk about it just fine as we are, my dear colleague. I'm not stupid enough to believe Federation lies." He strolled toward McCoy, and the Starfleet officer pressed back against the piping behind him. "Do you know what the natives think is happening? They say the gods are angry with them. Glaciers calve and the Kitka say it's the ice crying in despair for what they've done in letting Nordstral come here and take the plankton." He leaned conspiratorially close, and McCoy swallowed hard. "Personally, I think they've realized what they have here and are trying to get out of the contract so they can sell to the highest bidder." Muhanti laughed; it was a sound with no soul behind it. "Good luck to them! I know Nordstral Pharmaceuticals. Now that they're making money from that plankton, there's nothing the Kitka can do about it!" He twirled in a slow circle, voice dreamy. "The Kitka say the ice never cried before we came. That there were no quakes, no mental illness, and no magnetic storms. They say the winds are worse now, since our coming. And all because we take a little plankton for ourselves." He snorted in disgust.
McCoy barely heard him. Something Muhanti had said made a resounding ping in McCoy's brain.
"But I know the truth. I know what you're trying to do here, and it won't work." Muhanti grasped the release lever and slammed it home. The Soroya groaned as her entire harvest of millions of tons of plankton washed back into the Nordstral depths.
McCoy fought his bonds. "Muhanti, don't!"
The Indian doctor snarled and stepped close enough that McCoy could feel the heat of his body even through the wet clothing. "The Federation is the pirate king of the galaxy. I know you want what we have here."
"You idiot!" McCoy railed. "We'll suffocate without that plankton!"
"You're the idiot." Muhanti reached out and snaked his fingers deep into McCoy's hair. "You still think you have me fooled." He drew McCoy's forehead against his damp chest and held it there despite the other man's struggles.
The intercom crackled to life. "Bones! What's happened? Bones!"
"Ah, your captain's voice. Too bad you can't warn him that the game is over and I'm in command now." Muhanti's fingers traversed McCoy's skull, probing like blind moles in dark tunnels. "I see " he murmured. "Oh, yes, it's all right here for anyone to read." He bracketed McCoy's head with his hands and tilted his face up almost lovingly. "A shame to waste such a brilliant mind."
"What the hell are you talking about?" McCoy wished he could snap his he
ad around and bite Muhanti, but the other doctor held him too firmly.
"I can tell by the bumps on your head that not only is this a Federation plot, but one contrived by none other than yourself, Dr. McCoy. It really is quite brilliant. What a shame that I'm smarter than you are; and that you put your mind to such a wasteful scheme." He tsked-tsked in feigned pity. "You realize, of course, that you'll have to die."
"Now, wait just a minute, Muhanti"
The ship's doctor drew forth an ulu from his back pocket. "The Kitka have been useful in some ways," he murmured, almost dreamily considering the light-catching upward curve of the blade. His eyes flicked to McCoy's. "Don't be alarmed or worried, dear friend. I'm quite a skillful surgeon. You won't feel anything too long." He grasped McCoy's chin in one hand and lay the knife against his cheek.
"Muhanti!"
Kirk's cry came from the door, but too late, too damned late. McCoy felt the blade taste his skin
and the Soroya bucked under them as though it were her metal flesh violated by the ulu. Muhanti staggered sideways, catching himself against the bulkhead and spinning to meet Kirk's advance.
Kirk stepped into the room, hands open and away from his sides. "Put the knife away, Muhanti. No one wants to get hurt here."
"If I'd the time, I'd sit down and laugh at your stupid jokes, Captain Kirk. Your being here only points up the Federation's deficiencies. Imagine you achieving a captaincy when they could have had me." He slithered behind McCoy and grasped his chin from behind. "Your friend and I were just discussing the best way to end this game, Captain. Perhaps you'd care to watch to see what's in store for you?"
Soroya shivered again, shimmying and gonging like a bell, and throwing Muhanti aside. Kirk flung himself forward and tackled him around the knees. They crashed to the ground, water flying in all directions. Muhanti eeled out of Kirk's grasp and thrashed to his feet, kicking out to keep the Starfleet officer at bay. Kirk rolled out of reach, watching Muhanti's knife hand, and got to his knees, poised to move in any direction. His eyes darted, seeking an opening or a weapon of some kind, but there was nothing to be found.